Yes, one of the first things the US Board on Geographic Names decreed was to get rid of diacritics, which they considered the apostrophe to be. That was in 1890 or thereabouts. However, it wasn’t completely enforced or maybe it was just meant for possessive apostrophes. At any rate, Coeur d’Alene ID never lost its apostrophe, although it did lose a circumflex over the second E.
And there have been a few names that have reverted. Two city names that have are D’Lo MS and Lee’s Summit MO. There may be others. Several natural features have also had their possessive apostrophes restored: Martha’s Vineyard, Ike’s Point NJ, John E’s Pond RI, Carlos Elmer’s Joshua View AZ, and Clark’s Mountain OR (named for William Clark, the famous explorer).
It is, but speaking as a pedant who strenuously objects to the stupidity of modern colloquialisms (“I literally could care less” is a fine exemplar) I don’t really have a big problem with losing apostrophes in any proper names. It’s mildly annoying, but where is it written that proper names have to follow prescribed orthography? A name can legitimately be spelled any way the name’s owner – or the originator of a term – wants to spell it.
For example, Hudson Bay in Canada is named after the British explorer Henry Hudson. Should it have been “Hudson’s Bay” as many incorrectly refer to it? Who cares! But then we have (or had, until recently) the venerable 350-year-old “Hudson’s Bay Company”, apparently so named because someone had misconstrued the correct name of the famous bay. I thought it was a quaint discrepancy, but it’s a proper name, and never bothered me.
So if Martha’s Vineyard, for example, were to become “Marthas Vineyard” at some future date, I wouldn’t get too excited about it.
But when I see the “grocer’s apostrophe”, like “apple’s and orange’s on sale today” I’d happily set fire to the place!
There’s also been a trend toward replacing the word “Disease” in “[Name]’s Disease” with a more descriptive word. (See “Hodgkin’s lymphoma” or “Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.”)
Huh. I’ve typically heard it said as “I couldn’t care less.” And in that case adding “literally” as an intensifier actual makes literal sense as well.
If dropping the contracted “not” has become more the common usage, well that makes sense to me. At some point a phrase functions as a single unit of understood meaning, its origin no longer of usage concern.
Official health agencies frown on naming diseases after a patient who had it, as that’s dehumanizing for the patient. Any official disease name based on a person’s name will be the name of the researcher who first or most prominently studied it.
And I think that nowadays, ALS is probably better known as what Stephen Hawking had, than Lou Gehrig.
Yeah, I know some people have given up and decided (in the case of both “could care less” and “literally”) that what it means isn’t what it actually means. But Al, bless him, is still fighting the good fight.
I generally send the rats asses with which I am presented (one of my dogs excels in rodent capture) to the dump, via my fine city’s refuse collection service. The rest of the body goes with them.
(I think this thread is so derailed, I think it might need to be moved… and I will try… try… try really hard not to comment while it is in FQ.)
Modifying a quote box is forbidden on the SDMB, even if you are correcting a typo or a spelling mistake. Normal editorial rules apply, so feel free to use [sic] to indicate that the original quote has an error (or you believe it has an error), such as:
If they erroneously add a [sic] because they think it’s an error, that’s no biggie. And I’m sure since this is the SDMB that someone will nitpick and correct the erroneous [sic].
Eh. . . just pull the plug on this one. It’s been answered to the extent possible, and the literalist drivel that it’s descending is adding nothing new to that discussion, and in honor of the Preakness today. . . that horse has been flogged enough.
I’m not going to take this to ATMB, but this was an honest “highlight, press ‘quote’” as is usual to get a quote snippet.
If the post quoted was shortly later edited to change the content, spelling, even just punctuation, I will not get notified. And besides, I can’t edit my post now to correct it.
And technically, even adding “[sic]” is editing a post.
Anyway. Mod Note accepted and I will try not to do this again.
I have no recollection of going back and editing that post, but then, I have no recollection of a lot of things! I readily accept that I may have posted exactly what you quoted and then quickly edited it. It’s no big deal. And all very appropriate in a thread about nitpicky orthography!
